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Category: Psychedelic

I spent the night of 11/11 in a giant teepee doing peyote with a shaman from Mexico of Huichol lineage. The peyote was intense. Different forms: a powder, a glop called “guacamole” and a brewed tea passed around 3 times. They all tasted nasty —the guacamole was the worst. Effects were ambiguous. First came the “body load.” Typical with psychedelics where one’s body shifts into low gear. It carries a heavy load across some inhospitable tundra riddled with puddles of fuming nausea, trying not to spin its tires. Perhaps it’s impurities. The body resists the shift to other dimensions. But the effect seems common, even for those pure vegan/breatherians with decalcified third eyes and sparkling clean chakras.

I caught glimpses of euphoria. Touched places I’ve visited in the past —where the moment is perfect, the energies of the body purr. Much of the time, I drifted through kinesthetic planes. Once I swept awareness left and right, lassoing a small clan of those near me into a tribe. I was the chief, running with a tight-knit band, entering a new world. This chiefdom idea-form was playful and hypothetical but as my attention rested on it, I could sense energies in the body making it physical and real to the upper mind. The interface between mind and body, how and where thoughts manifested and how that looped back viscerally, was fascinating.

Peyote songs played in a fast rhythm, a newborn’s heartbeat. Listening a while, then awareness settled back in the body. Not in verbal constructs or emotion, but as the body intelligence engaged in its own system. With patterns less ephemeral than the mind’s, but still dynamic. They shift, these patterns. Tectonic plates forming an underling a “tone” in the mind. Sometimes the shifts created ripples of introspection, the intellect trying to identify what this body state means, creating an attractor for a mood. An abstraction. Other times a passing notion in the upper mind injects substance into cracks in these plates triggering a shift, small or massive. The degree of shift unrelated to the intensity of the thought but to where it fell in the firmament of the body and what substrate the cognitive frack encountered.

I’m grateful for all the plants have taught. Illuminating. Now I need to take their lessons, put them into practice rather than accumulating scrapbooks of insights. There is depth enough in anything to reach the bottom of everything. (William Blake says it better.) There’s no time to waste on the surface of things. Time to go deeper. The body knows how and leads the way.

Many knights and ladies have left their secure homes and plunged into the magical realm of their illusions, fantasies, and false projections. Like Odysseus’ men who, on their journey back home, were seduced and then turned into pigs by the enchantress Circe, these present-day seekers must disarm the dangers they face by determining when these visions are nothing more than mere aspects of themselves (which can manifest in multi-faceted ways, for instance, as alluring damsels, windmills, dangerous beasts, or beckoning forests). Victory over our illusions and projections comes when we are able to distinguish, in our bodies, the difference in sensation between our surface reactions and our true intuitive feelings. In thus securing our imagination to the movements of the body, we clear our inner screen to reflect the wisdom that is waiting to shine through. This is where the great power of dreaming comes into our hands.

Why are these sensations so important? The almost unimaginably rich world of bodily sensations—the shimmers, the tingles, the pulsings and throbbings—are a direct path to the healing and evolution of both consciousness and the body. They are a direct expression of your life force, which is your connecting link to God. If you have only a limited awareness of sensations, you will also feel only a weak connecting link to the Divine.

Well, the excursions with plant teachers are over for now. Just got back from Vilcabamba and had probably the last ceremony for this year. It was just Felicia, miko and I. The medicine seems to have been curative for some physical issues miko had, particularly with her stomach. She didn’t get the kind of “soul” cleansing she got the last visit, which was pretty dramatic —but time will tell what benefits might unfold for her.

For me, this marked my 5th San Pedro adventure. It was powerful and it’s quite devious, these plant teachers. They always answer my questions but so far never in a way I expect. My question for grand-father this round was roughly “how can I activate the most of my potential in the time I have remaining.”

I was expecting some revelation about expanded consciousness, interests I could pursue, inspirational motivation. Nope. The answer really had nothing to do with the mind, but rather the body. Apparently I have all sorts of stuff “locked” into configurations of the body that San Pedro demonstrated how to release. Muscular and structural knots started snapping like cut cords and within them energies trapped for generations, it seemed, were being released. Apparently the way to maximize my potential is something my body knows and has been prevented from accomplishing. Or at least something that needs to be done first, in order to clear the way to a deeper recognizance. I think it’s time to get serious again with qi gong, which is a vehicle I’ve flirted with for years and probably the most direct way I know of for working with the energies of the body.

So back to everyday life now and in something like a week and a half we head for Japan, where the lessons will not doubt continue…

There was a man who had spent most of his life pursuing his spiritual path. He heard of a very wise man and traveled to meet him.

“I have come a great distance to see you”, he said to the wise man, “and I was hoping you could answer a single question that has concerned me for some time.”

“What is your question?” the wise man replied.

“I have been on my path for a very long time and I grow old. I wonder if you could tell me, how much longer until I gain understanding? Until I have knowledge rather than just belief?”

The wise man nodded and said, “I think I can answer this question for you. But first, you must do something for me.”

“Anything” the man said, hopefully.

“You see that basket by the tree over there? Take it to the well down by the fence and bring it back to me full of water.”

The man thought the task simple enough. The basket was filthy, caked with dirt, twigs, chicken shit. He walked to the well and scooped out water and walked back to the wise man. But by the time he got back, all the water had leaked from the woven basket. The next time he ran back, but still, the water leaked and the basket was empty. Nevertheless, he thought maybe if he was faster or carried the bucket level, or tipped at a certain angle, and he tried all morning, then late into the afternoon. Finally it seemed the task was hopeless and he set the bucket down by the wise man.

“I could do this all day”, he said to the wise man, “probably all night, and maybe most of the following day. But I don’t think it will ever hold the water. And besides, I don’t see how this has anything to do with my question.” He sat down exhausted and disgusted.

“It is true”, said the wise man, “the basket by its very nature cannot contain the water. Just like your mind cannot hold the answer you seek. But look at the basket now. It is clean and the reeds glisten. And like the basket, each time you immerse yourself in the mystery, you remove the debris from your mind, and the layers of dirt and chicken shit from the cracks so the light can shine through.”

The last ceremony started at 7:00am and went until almost 3:am the next day. It was with the San Pedro cactus, and the shaman for the ceremony was Santiago. He takes the traditions passed down from his elders very seriously. But he also has a wicked sense of humor. This was the “light” ceremony of San Pedro. The one before, also with Santiago and San Pedro a few days earlier and in the night time was a “shadow work” ceremony.

Ayahuasca was like a stern grandmother -tough love- but San Pedro was more like a warm grandfather. He might tease you a little, but he opened your heart while showing you things that reformed your mind. During both the dark and the light ceremonies, Santiago unrolled a pelt of the jaguar in front of the fire and we were encouraged to “ride the jaguar”, taking turns sitting on it and letting go of what wasn’t ours into the fire to be purified, or expressing our difficulties, desires, quandaries. Some people were carrying very heavy burdens. Abuse, both giving and receiving. Trauma. Fears. Loss. Painful relationships. Some were looking for answers or resolutions. Some just expressing gratitude.

Santiago would listen and watch. He would sometimes circle the fire while someone was speaking, tossing in copal, sage, powders. The smoke would shift and dance, extending tendrils. When the smoke drifted by my place in the circle, I would pull it to me with my hands, over my head and shoulders, to my chest. San Pedro spoke directly to our hearts, telling us that we were all one. Every person’s challenges, difficulties, trauma, joy, gratitude was felt by those in the circle so deeply with such compassion and beauty shining in everyone that sometimes I felt tears streaming down my face like rain. For their pain, their happiness. For their sorrows. Their being human. The lessons of grandfather showed us a natural love that wells from the core of our beings when we are able to drop artificial divides that separate us from others. Santiago would offer incredible insights with a few words, a story, a piece of song; but as he said many times: he was just a man, the real teacher was the intelligence of the plant and the sacred space it created for us to heal, to see, to understand.

When I rode the jaguar in this last ceremony I just wanted to express thanks and gratitude, for the opportunity to meet these spirit teachers, for the lessons I’d received but couldn’t verbalize. For renewing conversations that my spirit once had in childhood and now has again with the wind, the earth, the fire and water. The vibrant streams of the living elements in existence. It’s hard to express what these mean to me. On so many levels. And I had lost touch so long ago with the ways they had once spoken to me. For each person, Santiago had a different message. For me, he told me I was once again connected with my lineage and was taking my place in the tradition of the guardians of the fire. It struck me odd…one of my ancestral lineages is the Potawatomi tribe, who are known as the Keepers of the Fire. But the fire is sacred in many lineages and it’s associated intimately with purification, with a vitality of spirit, which is something I find myself deeply engaged in at this stage of my life. As I returned to my place, I was outed to come back to the Jaguar and play a song with the small backpack flute I had brought secretly in my bag. They seemed to enjoy it, and I was glad, because I had no idea how I was playing.

All in all, this was an amazing journey. And while I’ve over-used that word, “amazing” in these stories, it’s the only placeholder I can think of. I witnessed issues that people carried healed with San Pedro and Ayahuasca, faster and deeper than I imagine could be done with years of psychotherapy. I witnessed the power of love that humans can feel and express when they realize the deep connection that we all have as children of this beautiful, magnificent planet. And I received a level of teachings with a depth I have never experienced before. I am grateful I had the opportunity to meet these teachers in my lifetime.

Aho Mitakuye Oyasin
“to all my relations”

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone
as if life were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions
to feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings
surely, even you at times have felt the grand array
the swelling presence and chorus crowding out your solo voice
you must notice the way the soap dish enables you
or the window latch grants you courage
alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity
the stairs are your mentor of things to come
the doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you
and the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream ladder to divinity
put down the weight of your aloneness
and ease into the conversation
the kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink
the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last
all the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves
everything is waiting for you

My experience was mostly non-visual. It was a kind of dialog and it felt like shifts and healings were happening but it was difficult connecting with grandmother. Some of my traveling companions had wild journeys across the universe, into realms of demons and angels and alien surgeries. One poor child of the sixties, has not been able to experience anything at all after a lifetime of experimenting with drugs, his favorite being LSD. He’s 65, and suspects it might be a calcified pineal gland.

At first glance, a “calcified” pineal, sounds about as far-fetched as chemtrails to the skeptical mind. But there may be some validity… the pineal has always been a mysterious gland in the brain. Descarte thought it was the gateway to spirit. An interesting insight, at his time, as it has been found to produce DMT in the brain, the same psychoactive agent of Ayahuasca. For another lady here, also in her 60’s, this was her 12th experience with Aya. It has always been a hellish experience for her, she’s called it trying to ride a wild horse and each time she feels like she loses her mind and has been thrown off and banged up on the ground. Why go through all that? It certainly isn’t pleasure seeking. For her, she says it is to help prepare for dying. Trial runs. So she could experience the chaos that will happen then without losing it. And last night Ayahuasca showed her that she would not cross that threshold alone, that death was the realm of Aya and grandmother would be there to meet her. Also interesting because, evidently, DMT is released in the brain in large quantities at both birth and death

Maybe I’ll do an experiment decalcifying the pineal with a more alkaline diet and see what it does to my dreaming and visualization. (Flouride is supposed to be a major culprit in the calcification. Curious, that. Maybe it’s put in the water supply to keep us from waking up? Of course now we’re veering into conspiracy theories, so enough rambling.)

My journey was much more prosaic, but left in its wake a trail of insights. Most of which I can’t verbalize yet, or maybe ever. But there was this one point, where I was trying to meditate, just trying to “abide” in awareness of this very strange state of mind, allowing whatever to come up and whatever reaction to what was coming up occur, but resting only in awareness without preference, without “self.”

I caught the wave of being for a few moments, but then Aya showed me a pitfall. Sometimes when I do this, and think I’m abiding in this place, I’m just using ego to run away from experience and get stuck halfway there: detached from experience, but still attached to ego. And things are stagnant there, not flowing, not living, as when abiding in awareness while fully experiencing everything that is happening. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but to me it was like a zen master stepped into my head and demonstrated what I was doing wrong…just like the first Aya experience with wisdom.

The ceremony lasted from 7:00pm until 7:00am the next morning. The endurance required for these is significant. Every morning I meditate and go through my stretches, yoga, 5-tibetans and some strength and energy exercises and I think this routine, along with pretty much fasting the days of the ceremony, have been the only things allowing me physically to cope(!)

Well, tomorrow is the “light” ceremony with San Pedro. The last ceremony on the docket. It starts at 7:00am and runs until late in the night. After that, back to Cuenca…I’ve been dreaming of sliders, beer, chips and guacamole. Probably won’t do my pineal any good…

About 2pm everyone filed into the sweat lodge, women on one side, men on the other. It was similar to the Lokota lodges I’d been in before, but the ceremony lasted much longer. Rather than 2 hours it went for 8. It was both awesome and tortuous in turns. Before the first door, I was kind of annoyed at the long windedness of some of the elders’ speeches. I recognize and understand the incredible importance of gratitude but the speeches went to almost comical lengths expressing everything up to and including thanking the rocks that I didn’t stump my toe on today (it seemed.) There was a lot of preaching to the choir and this group is pretty advanced in their spiritual paths so the very basic new agey messages didn’t seem necessarily. Very different from the much more concise Lokota ceremonies and, I don’t feel words are the right vehicle for expressing gratitude anyway.

After that little dark, judgmental energy passed, and after drinking the first round of San Pedro, the door closed the heat intensified, there was singing and the energy really picked up. I entered with the intent to send 3 healings. To my mother, for her health issues and pain, to my brother for his struggle with alcoholism and to my wife to heal her heart. By the second door and second round of medicine (San Pedro) I felt connected to the grandfather’s energy and become a conduit for powerful energy beaming through my heart for those healings. I had also asked that my heart become more open to the ways of spirit, and this was answered in a striking way a bit later.

They packed a little too many people in here, I thought, and the third round I made what seemed to be a huge mistake at the time, drinking both San Pedro and Ayahuasca. While I feel like I’m getting to know San Pedro a little better, Ayahuasca, the grandmother, continues to kick my ass. The shaman gave me a full glass, most were skipping it or taking only a swallow. I barely made it through the third wave of heat and had to leave the sweat to sit by the fire outside. In the progression of the 4 doors for rebirth, I had completed the birth, adolescence and adult phases of the ritual, bailing just before the final cycle: the elder.

Sitting by the fire, Ayahuasca showed me what I needed to learn to enter the ring of elders and the lesson I had to understand before my initiation. My children had taught me the nature of unconditional love, to love with my entire being. But with the other loves in my life, my friends and family, for whom I am truly grateful and blessed, especially my beautiful wife, I often find myself slipping into conditional love. Into projecting my beliefs about how they should be in order for me to love them fully. I do the same thing in spades with myself. Aya showed me how stupid I had been. How close minded and petty. As I sat in my blanket, under the stars and moon, with the ceremony continuing inside the sweat, I felt I had been taken aside by a very wise presence to be shown the absolute perfection of those in my life, just as they are. That there was nothing they needed to change or improve in order to deserve this love and it was only my attachments to things having to be a certain way, in myself, in others, that kept me from realizing this. I still have a lot of work to keep fanning the embers of this teaching into a fire that constantly burns in my heart, but I only have to remember this night with grandmother for the embers to glow.

After the ceremony, there was an all night fire. I stayed until about 3am. Around the fire there was some amazing music from those who had brought guitars, it felt like a big family and those helpers taking care of us, bringing us fruit, blankets, pizza(!) checking on our well being, the conversations around the circle, were all such magical reminders of what humans can be at their highest vibrations.

I’ve skipped writing up the ceremony preceding this, with San Pedro and the shaman Santiago, I’ll try to slot it back later, I just wanted to capture this at the moment.

SONNET 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.

I arrived at Gaia Sagrada (sacred earth) on Saturday afternoon on a curvy, one hour taxi ride from Cuenca. Sunday, the next day, was the first ceremony with Ayahuasca. I had to wake up earlier (than usual) in the morning because I had a cleansing with the shaman scheduled at 8:45am.

The Cleansing

The Ayahuasca shaman, Salvador, performed the cleansing in a small hut specifically designed for the service. He was tall, thin and always smiling. He spoke English well, but his voice was quiet, mellifluous. He asked my name, spoke it to the spirits, gave me a small white candle to rub over my body to pull out all that didn’t belong. I was to burn it later in a single sitting. Then he beat me with bunches of herbs that he had gathered outside, I took of my shirt and rolled my pants up past my knees and he spewed liquids and smoke and then, surprisingly, lit some on fire while spewing, so he was breathing fire. I felt flames licking my body. The cleansing when on through several phases. I left covered with strange smells, petals of flowers and plants and some singed chest hair. He said to wait at least a couple of hours before showering. I felt lighter but wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up much more than that.

The Ceremony

The ceremony proper started at 5:00pm and continued until noon the next (Monday) morning. It was amazing. We each had a padded mat with a floor chair, pillows, a couple of blankets, a cup and a puke bucket (very important!) Salvador was there with his wife, also a shaman, another apprentice shaman who had just come back from a sun ceremony, fasting 5 days with no food or water while hanging out in a tree. There was a fire keeper and about 16 of us along with probably about 8 others who were work-studies at the retreat.

After dedications and thanks to the spirit of the plant, grandmother ayahuasca and the space created to bring knowledge from the north and south americas together in respect of their ancient traditions and prophecy which states when the eagle (North America) and the condor come together there will be a new age of peace. The eagle is often associated with the head and thinking mind, the condor with the heart and feelings.

We drank a cup of the medicine, after snorting some tobacco water to chase out malevolent energies and in about an hour things started to get very strange indeed.

We had a meeting the day before, where we discussed our intentions with the medicine. I had a few, all of which I forgot when it started to take hold. But while still in the beginning I found myself in a little clearing of the mind where I had a chance to cast an intent. So on the spot I decided what I wanted most from grandmother was wisdom. And immediately I was shown. But it took me a few days to even start to understand. And what follows is just the beginning of my comprehension.

I found myself immediately in a room that wasn’t a room, but it felt like a contained space and still present in the ceremony but now everything was unhinged. I did not have a stable self, I had no control over the thoughts and feelings that arose, the conversations and movement around me fractured into a million plot-lines. I was struggling to find some “place” to understand what was going on, some foothold, but I felt like someone who had literally lost their mind. I have great appreciation now for those in asylums experiencing similar states.

I think I was shown what wisdom was not. I was in mitote, the toltec word for 1000 voices that are happening in our heads all the time. Normally we pick just one to be our narrator. But that narrator is only telling one little tiny part of a vast story. And it’s generally telling it out of context. As various ideas and theories and attempts at interpretation surfaced and receded faster than the flickering of fireflies in the trees outside, I started to realize that wisdom was not something accessible to the way I was thinking and feeling. I had my ladder propped against the wrong wall and this one didn’t lead to freedom or understanding, it just led to the same patch of ground on another side. I recognized this experience a couple days later, recovering from the San Pedro voyage which I will write up shortly. It was explained in an audio book I had brought and when I heard it, it sorted certain things in place that had happened. Books have always helped me in that way. The book was “The Five Levels of Attachment” by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. and the phrase was: “are you using your knowledge, or is your knowledge using you?”

The experience was scary, it was hellish, it was great.

While all this was happening, for hours, there was a theater of consciousness unfurling in the Maloka. The women shaman were singing spirit songs with drums and rattles. Sometimes the vibrations of the songs made me grab my bucket and puke. Dry heaves, but something was leaving and that puke bucket became my best friend in the world and I guarded it jealously when helpers circulated to take the buckets and give you a new one.

The songs were in Spanish, but I could catch pieces of the lyrics… the red road of the heart, peyote was the spirit of the eagle, san pedro of the condor, tobacco of the bear, ayahuasca of the witch(!)

The shaman’s wife was dressed in a long black flowing dress with long dark hair, moved around the circle at times with bells, cleansing the space and creating a powerful vision. The fire keeper had strong feathers which he fanned the fire, bringing it to life and he circled like an eagle danced using the feathers to snatch burdensome energies and attachments from us as he passed by and flung them into the fire. It sounded like birds constantly in flight. Occasionally, Salvador would come to someone having a difficult time and spew a mixture with alcohol on them, which usually snapped them out of the worst of it.

The medicine came in rounds. I think there was 4 rounds in all. I drank in 3. At one point Salvador told everyone they had to do an exercise. I was apprehensive, I couldn’t even stand up. Luckily the exercise was just to smile. He recommended we do this whenever we can in a day and to smile more than we have to. When I thought about it, there were days I had gone without smiling at all. I mean to change that 🙂

(See, that wasn’t just a smiley emoticon, it was the record of an actual smile.) At one point he sang the phrase “every little thing going to be alright” which cracked those of us up that weren’t puking.

Toward the end of the ceremony we were allowed to drink some water that was passed around, after blessings and expressions of gratitude for how important water is to our lives and how lucky to have clean drinking water. Many expressions and teachings about gratitude, for us being there and allowing the shaman to share his path, to the people in our lives, our ancestors, to the earth, the air, the water and the fire that makes life possible.

Well there was so much more than was possible to capture. Ayahuasca is definitely not a recreational substance, a few people were questioning why on earth they had done this to themselves; but I think she is a powerful teacher if you find yourself called to meet her.

Today was rather hectic, though I found a current of calm later in the day and began tacking into it. Tomorrow I set sail for Gaia Sagrada, the psychedelic bootcamp, or spiritual retreat by their label. I’m pretty excited. Last week I wrote a set of intentions. Things I wanted to ask the plant teachers. But now I think I just want to be open and ask them to break up the brittleness that mind has built up over the years. The rigidity, the tensions locked unconsciously in the body and mental outlooks. I’m looking for some blue sky, some inner slack, to find my way back to the wonder of simply being in the world while connecting with the mystery. At one time the world seemed so large and numinous and threads of possibility that had nothing to do with progress or order radiated before me attached to the furthest reaches of outer space. But daily life, artificial demands, hardened opinion, has ground my perceptions down to very small, utilitarian circumferences that keep trapping me in their orbits.

So it’s with great gravity I begin this adventure :p Miko wants to go to the valley again, to speak more with Hauchuma, so we have another excursion scheduled about a week after I return. And after we’ve finished these inner journeys, we head to the orient for a month. To regroup :)

“One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.”

Well, I thought I was going to write up an articulate and insightful description of our journey with San Pedro, but I really can’t express most/any of it in words. It was amazing.

We had been on a bland diet a week before, no meat, sugar, fats, spices, salt, alcohol, etc. And a fast the day of the ceremony. The ceremony started around 10pm and went through the night until about 11am the next morning.

The fire pit was going most of the night. The sky was clear, the stars radiant, the San Pedro potent. That’s the cactus you see in the center of the first picture in the album.

Two plants are master teachers among the natives in South America: San Pedro (Hauchuma) and Ayahuasca. This was our first meeting with Huachuma. The ceremony was beautiful, the space was consecrated and purified. There were two Ecuadorian women, an Austrian backpacker, a north american couple from Baja, Mexico and us. Felicia and her assistant Pedro ran the ceremony, keeping checks on people through-out the night and keeping them supplied with fresh barf bags. I think everyone threw up at least once except me, not that I didn’t come close a few times. The brew itself was only about half a cup, a little bitter, slightly smokey, but wow, what a punch. The effect lasted about 12 hours, but probably peaked for only about 4 or so. It was amazing hearing the whole valley coming alive in the morning, the roosters, donkeys, who knows what all, but it was this fantastic symphony of life with the rising sun.

Maybe after some more time “processing” as Boulderites say, I may have more to tell. It felt as if some very deep shifts were/are happening!

Post note: one weird visual in the morning, sort of an after effect, was looking at the clouds and watching them change, but they changed in a specific way I’d seen before. Today I remembered where I had seen this. It was in the visualization tool google used to examine the way neural networks processed images (#deepdream) Intriguing. It’s like the algorithms of artificial intelligence are the sacred geometry of our times.